


give or take

by bazookajo94



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - No Exy (All For The Game), Can you keep a secret AU, Earthquakes, Kindred Spirits, M/M, POV Andrew Minyard, andrew and neil are strangers in the dark, neil says I’ve killed a man and andrew says 😳, once they’re out this becomes a fic of andrew in desperate pursuit, trying to find the man of his dreams, very loosely based on the plot of that book
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-15 07:00:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29680161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bazookajo94/pseuds/bazookajo94
Summary: Palmetto State University experiences a category six earthquake. Andrew Minyard, trapped in a crumpled building and waiting for help, suffers through the dark and damp room with another student he can’t see and doesn’t know.The other student, as one does in a life-or-death situation, fatalistically begins sharing all his secrets—he hates cookies, he thinks his roommates are kind of annoying, he kissed a girl and he didn’t like it, he grew up with the mob, he has a million dollars, he’s killed a man (well, probably).But Andrew and the stranger are eventually rescued and do not die.And the stranger in the dark disappears without even a face for Andrew to put to a name.
Relationships: Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Comments: 84
Kudos: 574





	give or take

**Author's Note:**

> ive written a lot of weird things for aftg but this is probably the weirdest
> 
> can't decide if i luv it or hate it but im tired of looking at it lol
> 
> this is for everyone who wanted more to all that ive been dreaming of 🧡 sorry i can't do more
> 
> thank u for being here i love you

Andrew heard a sniff, and that’s when he knew he wasn’t alone. He thought he had been—after the screams from outside and the aftershocks had stopped, Andrew had looked around the broken and dusty classroom and idly thought about how no one else but him had been there when the earthquake started, and now the door was blocked by fallen debris, and Andrew thought maybe his wrist was broken from a piece of drywall that fell on him and almost crushed the rest of him, and he wondered how long he would be sitting in this room before his family thought to search for him here. No one came to this building anymore, which is why Andrew liked to spend all his time there, along with a few other students who liked to study in an abandoned building.

Andrew settled in for a long wait, and a half hour later he had heard a sniff. It came from the classroom next to his, and Andrew could see the makings of a hole on the wall between the two rooms. It was not big enough for him to do anything about, the foundation thick and concrete in this old, industrial building. He couldn’t even see through it. 

Andrew did not call out. He wanted to see if whoever it was would cry more, but then the second sniff sounded thicker, followed by a soft and gutteral, _“Fuck._ ” 

“What,” Andrew said. 

“Oh,” the other person said, startled. “Hi.” 

“Are you hurt?” 

“Yes.”

“How?” 

“A wall is on top of me.” 

“Can you get out?” 

“I don’t think so.” 

Andrew did not move toward the hole. He continued sitting on the ground beside the door of his own classroom and listened to the person wheezing with the weight of a wall on top of them. 

“Well, this sucks,” the other person said eventually. 

“Not how you thought you’d go?” Andrew asked. 

“No,” they said, a bit wry. “I should have been dead years ago.” 

“Why.” 

“Wouldn’t you like to know.” 

“You brought it up.” 

“I’m not in my right mind. I think I’m about to die.” 

“Now’s the perfect time to spill all your secrets to a total stranger.” 

After a thoughtful pause, the other person said, “True. Don’t tell Matt, but I can’t stand his cookies. Or any cookies.” 

“That’s your deepest secret?” 

“I thought I’d ease you into it.” 

“Into what?” 

“Have you ever heard of ‘premeditated murder’?” 

“Oh?” 

The other person sighed. “Yeah. To be fair, it was in self-defense.” 

“Then it’s not premeditated.” 

“I said, ‘to be fair.’”

“I’m never fair,” Andrew told them. 

“Yeah,” the other person said. “Me, neither.” 

🤫

“...I know it’s kind of weird, but I can’t stop watching _Gilmore Girls._ I’ll just wait until my roommates leave and then put the show on.”

“Fuck Lorelai.” 

“Yeah. Fuck Rory, too.” 

“Luke forever.” 

“Jess for the win.” 

🤫

“…so I’m at this random fishing tournament with Kevin.”

“What the fuck.”

“Right? I thought that was just, like, a video game thing, but there was this little tournament at this local pond and Kevin wanted to be there.”

“Okay.”

“And he’s got the biggest fish and he’s ready to win, so when I caught mine randomly and it was obviously bigger—”

“—is this actually a metaphor story about something else—”

“—no, shut up, anyways, I let mine go so he’d still win, but he’ll be fucking pissed if he found out.”

“So I should obviously tell him immediately.”

“Sure. What’s he going to do, kill me?”

“Ha.”

“Ha.” 

🤫

“…I honestly hate living with Allison because she keeps trying to set me up with people and making bets on who I’ll date or whatever.”

“Why.”

“I don’t know? It’s like she thinks I’m a child who has to experience love or something. I wish I could tell her I’ve been on the run my whole life and was beat every time I kissed someone.”

“There’s a lot to unpack here.”

“Where do you want to start?”

“Who hit you?”

“My mom.”

“Who did you kiss?”

“Some girls.”

“On the run?”

“Yeah.”

“…”

“…”

“…”

“Strong game.”

“Apparently I’m attractive.”

“Not a worthwhile experience, then.”

“I will probably never kiss girls again.”

“Hm.”

“Hm.”

🤫

Their secrets game stopped when the boy crushed by a wall started violently coughing. They were wet and thick coughs, and when he finally stopped, Andrew heard the smallest whine of pain, muffled, but still there. Andrew looked down at this broken or sprained wrist, his torn armbands, the blocked door, and wondered how long they’d been there.

“What’s your name,” Andrew asked.

“Um,” the guy said. “Which one? I’ve had a lot of names.”

“Whichever one you want to give me.”

There was a long pause, so long that Andrew thought maybe the crushed man had finally died, but then Andrew heard another cough, followed by a guttural admission: “Abram.”

“Abram.”

“It’s not what I go by now, but it’s the only thing I have left of who I really am.”

“And you’ll just give it to me?”

“Well,” Abram said, clearing his throat. “I don’t have anyone else to give it to.”

Andrew felt the weight of the world atop his shoulders, crushing and desperate. He stood up, restless, and started pacing the room. Creaks and groans from the building still settling filled the air around him: drips from a busted pipe, crumbles from falling debris, and still the heavy wheezes of the man in the room beside him.

“What’s your name?” Abram asked.

“Andrew,” he answered, because he had been given a name, too. He was still pacing the room, avoiding the wall with the hole. “Tell me about who you were running from.”

Abram sighed. “Fine. But only because I don’t have anything else to do.”

🤫

“…and why would he think it's smart to show a nine year old what it's like to chop a man to pieces?”

“Nine is an impressionable age.”

“What were you doing at nine years old?”

“Not watching people get murdered.”

“Let me guess: you were doing the murdering.”

“Not until I was sixteen.”

“I think I was fifteen.”

“This isn’t a competition.”

“Only because you’re losing.”

🤫

“…so my mom stole five million dollars and we used that to go around the world, but he always found us, and then he killed my mom and I burned her body and buried her bones on the beach, and then a few years later my dad found me and the FBI found him.”

“How much of the money is left?”

“You don’t care about my dead mother?”

“Not when she beats little boys for kissing girls.”

“Oh. Um. Yes, I still have some of the money. About a million dollars, I think.”

“Why the fuck are you living with roommates you hate if you could buy a house.”

“Why would I waste my money on a house when I’m about to die in, I dunno, maybe twenty minutes?”

“So soon?”

“I can’t really feel my lips anymore.”

“Tell me about the mafia.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Whatever you want to tell me.”

🤫

“…I don’t actually know if he died or not. I just remember wanting him to get away from me, so I pushed him, and he fell, and there was a lot of blood.”

“So maybe you haven’t killed anyone.”

“Or maybe this is just the story I’m telling you right now before I die.”

“Why soften the blow?”

“Maybe I want you to like me and think I’m a nice person.”

“You’re not a nice person.”

“No. And I don’t think you are, either.”

“Cut from the same cloth.”

“It’s you and me against the world, Andrew, until one of us dies.”

“In about twenty minutes?”

“Give or take.”

🤫

Abram’s silences were getting longer between secrets. The pain in Andrew’s wrist was constant and throbbing, and he was having a harder time keeping Abram talking. Some of Andrew’s questions went unanswered, and not because they were too probing or intrusive. Sometimes Abram wouldn’t hear him, or sometimes it seemed Abram would startle awake, or sometimes he seemed confused on where he was, and then Andrew would ask another question.

“What did you do after your father was captured?” Andrew asked, and it took Abram thirty seconds to reply in a soft voice.

“I don’t know. I found Kevin again and came to this school.”

Abram stopped. Andrew couldn’t hear him wheezing anymore.

“What are you studying?” Andrew asked. He was still avoiding the hole in the wall, all the way across the room. He couldn’t pace anymore, so he was just standing by the door, arms crossed, feet tapping. 

“Spanish, maybe,” Abram whispered. Andrew could barely hear him. He stared through the hole to the other room and strained his ears. He heard Abram say, “I liked math. That could have been fun.” He stopped again, taking a deep breath.

“Abram,” Andrew called, when Abram had been quiet for too long and Andrew had thought he heard people calling from outside.

“I just thought…” Abram rasped, as people entered the building, hollering to be heard through the walls, “…that maybe I could have had a life by now. I tried so hard. I wanted to live.”

“Abram,” Andrew said again, finally moving to the hole, ignoring the people calling for him. He put his hands up to the broken plaster and started pulling pieces away, peering through, but there wasn’t anything to see but crumbled walls and broken lights. Andrew kept prying at the wall, his fingernails chipping. He left behind spots of blood—and still, no matter how much he dug, the hole never got bigger.

Andrew could hear people outside his room’s door trying to move his debris.

“Thank you, Andrew,” he heard Abram say. Andrew stopped trying to force the hole bigger and instead punched the unforgiving bricks, scabbing his knuckles, burning his already injured hand, breaking it now if it wasn’t already before. He punched again. Abram kept speaking. “For talking to me while I’m about to die in the dark. At least I’m not alone. I didn’t ever get to have that before.”

“Abram—” Andrew tried, punching the wall, over and over, and then his door was unblocked and people were swarming him and Andrew fought, swinging and kicking, but his wrist was broken and his hands were bleeding and he couldn’t hear Abram anymore, didn’t know what was happening on the other side of the wall, didn’t know if the last time he’d hear Abram’s voice would be to him saying thank you for not letting him die alone.

* * *

“I don’t know how you do it, Andrew,” Nicky said, popping another fry in his mouth. “Whenever I’m on a floor more than one story off the ground, I get intense war flashbacks.”

“Andrew was on the ground floor when it happened,” Aaron said, wiping his greasy fingers on his pants. “Why would he care if he’s on the roof when an aftershock goes off?”

“Um, because it’s still terrifying?” Nicky countered. Andrew was silently picking at his burger. “We all experienced the earthquake. And Andrew was alone for, like, three hours after it happened. I don’t know how he’s not scared.”

Andrew stopped picking at his burger and leaned back in his chair, tuning his family out. He stared into the relative space of the fast food restaurant they were in and didn’t check back in to the world until he heard someone say, “Kevin, can you stop?”

Andrew’s head turned in the direction of the voice, but all he found was a family scolding their small child away from reaching for the paper crowns displayed on the condiment counter.

“Do you know them?” Aaron asked, dubious, when he noticed where Andrew’s attention had gone.

Instead of answering, Andrew stole a fry from Aaron, who immediately smacked his retreating hand, who then retaliated by stealing another fry.

“Boys,” Nicky scolded half-heartedly, before he too went in for a fry, laughing when Aaron smacked him.

*

Andrew was mindlessly rifling through the clothing racks of the clearance section at Target as Nicky flirted with a worker when Andrew heard someone say, “Allison! Cards Against Humanity is not a good party game!”

Presumably Allison replied, “It is the _best_ party game, you uncultured swine.”

“Uncultured? _Swine_? Why don’t you play a good game for once in your miserable life, you sack of fertilizer.”

“ _Fertilizer_? Listen here, bitch—”

By this point, Andrew had ventured into the board game aisle and found two middle schoolers glaring furiously at each other, a discarded game of Cards Against Humanity on the ground between them. Andrew grabbed a random board game off the shelf and returned to Nicky, tossing the box into the cart.

“What’s that?” Nicky asked, but Andrew had already walked away.

*

Andrew was playing Spades on a campus computer in the school’s computer lab when someone plopped into the seat beside him, harried and frantically logging in, their hair askew, and a plate of sad little cookies resting beside the keyboard.

“Yo, Matt!” one of the lab technicians called, and the frantic student, Matt, waved in greeting before pulling up a software riddled with incomprehensible code. Matt took a bite of one of their cookies.

Andrew reached over and broke off a piece of another cookie, and Matt made a choking sound. “Um,” they said.

“This is good,” Andrew said, accusingly.

“Help your fucking self?” Matt said, moving the plate of cookies to the other side of them, away from Andrew.

“Did you make that?” Andrew asked.

“Fuck off, dude.”

“Did you?”

Matt sighed. “No. My friend did. Can you leave me alone?”

Andrew turned back to his game of Spades.

*

“Why is Andrew pouting?”

“Andrew doesn’t pout.”

“Okay, why is Andrew sulking, then?”

“Andrew doesn’t sulk.”

“He’s definitely pining.”

“My god, _pining_? Do you not know your brother at all?”

“Well, I’m starting to suspect that _you_ might not know your cousin at all.”

“Pff. Whatever. Andrew is the same as always.”

“Yeah, except for the pining.”

“Jesus Christ. Next you’ll tell me he has vested opinions on the convoluted love triangles in _Gilmore Girls._ ”

“That was oddly specific.”

“You’re telling me. I thought I saw him watching it the other day on his phone?”

“What the fuck?”

*

When Andrew saw a moderately attractive man filling up a 64oz cup at the Slurpee machine in the student café, he veered away from the snack aisle and walked up to him.

Andrew noted the scratches on the guy’s arms, the bruises under his eyes, and said, “Have you ever killed a man?”

The guy fumbled with his cup but didn’t drop it. “Uh,” the guy said, looking at Andrew in complete bafflement. “No?” He didn’t take his hand off the Slurpee handle, and he was staring at Andrew as Andrew studied him with intent focus, until the Slurpee overflowed onto the guy’s hand. He yelped, backing away from the mess, and Andrew scowled.

“Useless,” he said, and then grabbed a small can of Sour Cream and Onion Pringles and moved to the register.

“Is this a test or something?” the guy called after him, but Andrew paid for the Pringles and left without a look back.

*

Andrew studied the student in his Communications class in the front row with narrowed eyes. The student had limped into the classroom, and he hadn’t been in class since the earthquake. The student didn’t speak much, and possibly lived in the dorms, and looked a bit homeless. Andrew steepled his fingers and stared at the student all hour.

After the professor called the end of class, Andrew walked up to the student slowly prying themselves out of their seat and demanded, “Do you have a million dollars.”

The student’s eyebrows rose. “Uh...no?”

Andrew gave the student one more once over before he pushed passed them and left the classroom.

“Was I just mugged?” he heard the student say.

*

Andrew found a study room in a small building far and away from the bulk of campus traffic. He sat there all day, doodling on his text book, doodling on the table, doodling on his hand, and never had to look up at anyone coming in because no one ever came in.

Until around eleven that night, when the building was probably supposed to be closing soon, two people tripped in, giggling and inebriated, and Andrew finally stood up and left. Once he was outside, he perched himself on the ledge of the stairs and lit up a cigarette, softly exhaling into the still dark night. Minutes later, the door opened behind him, and he heard whoever was also chased out of the building by drunken makeouts stand just behind him.

Andrew did not turn around, but vague, unhopeful, like he had done all week, he asked, “Have you ever been on the run from the mob?”

The person behind him snorted out their nose once in bemused laughter. Andrew heard them start to walk away. He flicked ash, staring down at his almost-healed knuckles, his still wrapped wrist. “Well, yes,” the other person replied once they were far enough away they had to almost holler to be heard. “But you knew that already.” 

Andrew’s head whipped in his direction, but Abram was too far away for Andrew to follow.

*

“Have you ever participated in a fishing tournament?”

“Like, in _Animal Crossing_? Sure—hey, where are you going?”

*

“How do you feel about Matt’s cookies.”

“What? Who’s Matt?”

*

“When was the last time you were stabbed and who did it.”

“Um. Never? Are you offering? Am I being mugged? What’s happening.”

*

“How did your mother react the first time you kissed a girl?”

“Uh, what? Hey, aren’t you that guy who’s going around campus asking people weird questions?”

“No.”

“Hey, wait! Don’t you want to know how my mom reacted?”

*

“I think it’s time we stop letting Andrew out unsupervised,” Aaron told Nicky one night at dinner.

Nicky shot a nervous glance to Andrew, sitting right beside Aaron and picking at his salad. “Uh.”

Aaron went on, unconcerned with his twin and the knives he kept on his person at all times. “I have had three people come up to me _just today_ and tell me weird, personal answers to questions I didn’t even fucking ask.”

“Stop looking like me, then,” Andrew said.

Aaron, glaring, retorted, “Stop asking people weird questions, then! Why are you going around campus asking people questions at all? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Andrew said nothing, but before Nicky could swoop in to alleviate the tension, there was a knock, followed by a folded piece of paper being forced through the crack under the door.

Aaron and Nicky stared at the paper in bewilderment, but Andrew stood up. He picked up the note, unfolded it, and read:

 _Andrew,_ _  
_ _As much as I delight in your desperate pursuit of me after our near-death tryst, I would really appreciate it if you would stop telling everyone on campus all of my fucking secrets?_ _  
_ _xoxo_ _  
_ _Abram_

Andrew crumpled the note in his hand. He did not move to the door, but he did stare at it as if Abram was still out there, just on the other side.

“What is it?” Nicky asked.

“Nothing,” Andrew answered.

*

After a week of investigating the campus’s website for any leads, Andrew eventually located PSU’s equivalent to a “man seeking woman” section in the school’s online newspaper. He paid ten dollars and submitted the following:

_man seeking potential murderer_ _  
_ _if you do not reveal yourself to me_ _  
_ _I will be forced to locate_ _  
_ _someone who can._ _  
_ _where are you._ _  
_ _xoxo_ _  
_ _Andrew_

Andrew stopped walking up to random people and asking them questions. After a week, people forgot about his weird behavior. Aaron stopped glaring at him as much.

After another week, Andrew read a response to his ad in the school’s online newspaper:

_man avoiding unapologetic narc_ _  
_ _well, I hope you have fun_ _  
_ _maybe we’ll see each other in hell one day_  
_you paid ten bucks for this?_  
_👺_

Andrew stared at his screen for two minutes, bracing his thumb under his chin and rubbing his pursed lips with the side of his index finger. Then, he stretched out his arms in front of him, linking his hands together and cracking his knuckles. He rolled his neck, stretching through the pops, and then closed out of the newspaper and pulled up a search engine instead.

He began by googling “fishing tournaments in my area.”

*

It didn’t take long to discover all he could about Kevin Day. Social media, weird sports tik toks, vlogs about history, and a tall athlete constantly hungry, and Andrew Minyard eventually tracked down Kevin Day scarfing two sloppy joes at the cafeteria on campus, one hand on a joe and another going through his phone.

Andrew slid into the seat across from Kevin and stole a fry off his tray.

“Hey,” Kevin greeted, not looking up from his phone.

“Have you ever fallen victim to a pity win at a fishing tournament?” Andrew asked, and Kevin swallowed his bite before turning from his phone to glare at Andrew.

“What the fuck is this weird pissing contest you have going on?” Kevin griped, smacking at Andrew’s creeping hand to his cosmic brownie. “He told me you’d find me eventually. Who even are you?”

“Where is he?” Andrew asked.

Kevin rolled his eyes. “I cannot disclose that information. Nor his name.”

Andrew stood up, stealing Kevin’s plastic water bottle and moving out of the way before Kevin could grab it back. Andrew started walking away from the table, and Kevin called from behind him, “He told me to ask you ‘Can you keep a secret?’” Andrew’s hand clenched around the cheap plastic of the water bottle, crinkling under the pressure. Kevin went on, “This is fucking stupid, by the way!”

Once he was outside again, Andrew pulled out his phone and ignored anyone in his way as he walked in the direction of his next class. Thinking of Kevin Day’s latest fifteen second video of throwing a ball at a wall, Andrew opened his app store.

*

“Why are you on Tik Tok?” Nicky asked him a few days later.

Andrew took a sip from his soda, scrolling through his fyp while he thought of his next move.

“Andrew, you have one hundred followers and you’ve only been on the app for five days. What could this mean for the family?”

Not listening, Andrew opened his notifications tab. He had just gotten a ping that someone stitched one of his videos, the one where he was playing hangman, the sentence “_ _ _ _m doesn’t like M _tt’s cookies” with a sad little hangman, dead with x’ed out eyes. Andrew pulled open the most recent stitch and watched as a hooded figure with heavily scarred hands and ravaged knuckles played their own game of hangman, their sentence saying, “I’v_ kill_ _ a man onc_ and I can _o it a_ain.” Instead of the hangman hung, the user had drawn the hangman being pushed by another stick figure, surrounded by a pool of blood, with x’ed out eyes.

Andrew left a comment: _cut from the same cloth._

Almost immediately, the user, @pitchatenth, replied: _👺_

Andrew followed the account, and they followed back.

“What is happening?” Nicky asked, watching all this happen from behind Andrew’s shoulder.

“Nothing,” Andrew said, pulling up to watch the rest of @pitchatenth's videos.

*

After three days of sending each other random videos on Tik Tok, Andrew went to the library to plot how to find Allison, the roommate, next. After some fruitless googles—he didn’t know where to start—Andrew gave up and ventured to a study table on the fourth floor. Since the earthquake, most people avoided the higher floors, so Andrew was the only one up there. He sat at one that had a partition separating it from an adjacent study table, tall enough that, when seated, the other side of the table wasn’t visible.

After an hour of piddly doodles and total silence, someone sat at the table on the other side of the partition.

“Hey,” Andrew heard Abram say. Andrew’s hands stilled.

“Please don’t stand up,” Abram went on.

Andrew did not stand up. “I don’t like that word,” he told Abram, tapping lightly on the thin wall separating them, staring at it as if he could see through it.

“So you’re sharing secrets now?” Abram’s tone was dry.

“One time Aaron broke the Atari but I told Nicky it was me.”

“Who’s Aaron?”

Andrew started picking at the wall with thin, weak fingernails. When Andrew was silent for too long, Abram asked, “What are you going to do next?”

“Find Allison.”

“Shouldn’t be too hard.”

“Hm.”

Andrew heard Abram pull out his textbooks and spread them out on the table, trusting that Andrew would not stand up. He stopped picking at the wall, staring down at his hands. The knuckles on his right hand were scarred.

Andrew said, “I was raised in foster care.”

Abram’s pen stopped writing.

“Adopted?” Abram guessed.

“My twin found me.”

“Aaron?”

Andrew rubbed at the scars on his hand before moving to trace the tan lines left behind from the brace he wore when his wrist was broken.

“Who’s Nicky?” Abram asked.

“Legal guardian. Cousin.”

“What about your parents?”

“Have you ever heard of ‘premeditated murder’?”

After only a slight pause, Abram asked, “Because they left you behind?”

“Because she hurt Aaron when I told her not to.”

“Ah.”

Abram started writing again. Andrew pulled out his phone, but he didn’t open anything. He just stared at the blank screen.

After a silent hour, Abram asked, “Why are you doing this?” Andrew could hear him cleaning up his books and stuffing them back in his bag.

Andrew confessed, perhaps his biggest secret, “I want to know you.”

Abram waited a beat before he said, “Don’t you?”

Andrew didn’t stand up from his table until he was sure Abram was gone.

*

Andrew had spent days trying to find an Allison who lived with a man who had been crushed in an earthquake, probably watched _Gilmore Girls,_ maybe lived with someone named Matt, and enjoyed meddling in a person’s dating life.

After hitting this impenetrable wall in his research, Andrew went to get coffee on campus, and he stood behind two other customers waiting to order: a leggy blonde typing furiously on her phone and a bored looking freshman.

As soon as the leggy blonde had her drink, she walked to a table with another leggy patron, brunette, and Andrew would have paid them zero percent of his attention—until he heard the leggy blonde huff and the leggy brunette reply, “No go?”

“No! He’s being impossible.”

“I think maybe it’s time to give up.”

“You like him, don’t you?”

“Well, no, not really. He’s kind of an asshole.”

“But a _cute_ asshole, right?”

“I don’t need to date him, Allison.”

“Ugh!” Allison huffed again, and Andrew left his spot in line and walked up to them.

The two girls frowned and glared at Andrew as soon as he was at their table, but Allison’s face cleared in recognition and she said, “Oh. It’s you.”

“Who?” her friend asked.

“The dude going around campus trying to find Neil.”

 _Neil,_ Andrew thought, and then said, “Where is he?”

“He told me to tell you, ‘Go fuck yourself.’” Allison sniffed, returning to her phone and her drink, and Andrew asked, “Are you still trying to set him up on dates he doesn’t want to go on?”

Allison, not looking up from her phone, said, “He doesn’t know what’s good for him. And this is none of your business.”

Andrew leaned into her space and waited until she was glaring at him to say, “Perhaps you need a little reminder that no means no,” and then he slid a knife out of his armband.

*

“Did you get into a knife fight at a coffee shop?”

“I didn’t stab anyone.”

“But there _were_ knives?”

“There’s always knives.” 

*

As Andrew began searching online for “neil” “neil palmetto” “neil allison” “neil matt” “neil kevin” “neil scarred” “neil mob” “neil killed a man” “neil is a little bitch” “fuck you neil” “where are you neil,” he came across one of the DJs for PSU’s radio station. Andrew tuned to the station and verified that the DJ, Electric Neil, was, in fact, not Abram, before he paid for a recurring ad and song to be played every day at three in the afternoon and three in the morning.

“Well, I can’t say this isn’t an odd request after that one time someone paid for Rick Astley to play all day on April Fool’s,” Electric Neil said on the first day of the broadcast, “but it’s definitely a little unusual! Anyways, this one is for, er, the demon mask emoji? And I’m just supposed to say, ‘Stop running,’ and then put on ‘Runaway Train’ by Soul Asylum. So here you go, our mysterious little runaway!”

Andrew’s message and song played for a week and change before he finally received a response.

“Well, folks, you heard it here first!” Electric Neil said one Friday afternoon. “The little runaway has finally responded! Their message to everyone, or perhaps just one particular person, is the rabbit emoji? And I am supposed to play this song every day at five in the PM. So, let’s go! ‘No,’ by Meghan Trainor!”

Andrew let Abram’s message play for two days before he paid for another one to send.

“Wow, these people just won’t quit!” quipped Electric Neil. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say they were in love?” The sound of wedding bells suddenly played before Electric Neil went on, “Anyways, in retaliation, another message is being sent out for the runaway: it is the knife emoji, followed by the song ‘The Search’ by NF. Sick song, bro, here we go.”

The next day, Electric Neil boasted, “I can’t tell if this is a happy end or a sad end! Our runaway has asked me to only play the song ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’ by The Beach Boys, just today at three in the morning. I sure hope your friend is listening, Runaway. Here’s to you two!”

Andrew listened to the song on the campus’s radio at three in the morning, only once, with no message, as he sat in the driver’s seat of his car in the middle of an abandoned parking lot, flicking ash off his cigarette through the small crack in his window. 

*

“Is Andrew still pining?” 

“He’s definitely still acting sus. I saw him googling Edible Arrangements the other day?” 

“How is that weird?” 

“Well, I haven’t seen an Edible Arrangement around, so I think he ordered it for someone else.” 

“Oh my _god,_ I think Andrew might still be pining.” 

*

Andrew was on his way back to his dorm after his last class for the day when he found someone standing at his front door holding an enormous bouquet of flowers. The flowers—sunflowers, daisies, billy balls, baby’s breath—were so abundant and obnoxious that, as Andrew approached, he could not see the person’s face.

Nicky, his attention snagging on Andrew’s approaching gait, beamed and said, “Ah! Here he is.”

The person holding the bouquet turned in Andrew’s direction, positioning the flowers to hide their face.

“Hey,” Abram said, and Andrew stopped five steps away. He did not return the greeting. The gaping dark centers of the various yellow, orange, and red sunflowers stared at Andrew in lieu of Abram. The rest of him was unassuming: tattered sneakers, washed-out jeans, the sleeves of a gray hoodie slumped at his wrists.

The hall was silent save for Abram’s nervous grip shifting on the crinkly paper of the bouquet.

After a minute, Andrew asked, “How did you find me.” He remembered the note from before, shoved under his door not long after they started all this.

“You’re not very hard to find,” Abram told him. 

“If only I could say the same.”

“If only.” 

Another beat of silence. Nicky was still standing in the doorway, watching with rapt attention but surprisingly staying silent.

Eventually, Abram said, “I won’t give this to you until you close your eyes.”

“You would trust me?” Andrew asked, but he closed his eyes immediately.

Abram didn’t say anything, and after a minute, Andrew heard the crinkle of the bouquet as Abram took a step forward and gently nudged the flowers into Andrew’s chest. The scent of foliage and green wafted into Andrew’s nose, soft petals and light prickles tickling his cheeks. Andrew did not open his eyes. He hugged the bouquet to his chest, heavy stems pushing into his stomach.

“Bye, Andrew,” Abram said, and then Andrew did not open his eyes until he heard Abram trot down the stairs behind him.

“Well, that was fucking weird,” Nicky said, holding the door open for Andrew to walk through. Andrew went into the kitchen, still hugging the bouquet, in search of a vase—or something that could be used as one.

“What was that?” Nicky continued. “Or rather, _who_ was that? He’s cute, though what the fuck happened to him? And how do you know him?”

“I don’t,” Andrew said, disappearing to his room, face full of flowers. 

*

Andrew was running out of options. He was just googling sky writing when he realized what he was doing and slammed his laptop closed.

“What?” Aaron snapped, deflecting Andrew's poor mood back at him. 

Andrew stood up and left the dorm with no clear direction, just wanting out, just wanting gone. 

*

“Oh, so you think that just because you’re obsessed with my friend we can start hanging out?”

“I can leave.”

“No, wait, you scare all the people away. Are you good at sports?”

“And fishing.”

“Okay, nevermind, you can leave now.”

*

Andrew and Abram had a hidden note they kept adding to, tucked away in a giant book about garden gnomes in the non-fiction section of the library. When Andrew went to read Abram’s response to his recent question **_where does Napoleon keep his armies_ ** , he found instead _why are you doing this._

Andrew wrote, **_doing what_ **

Over the course of the next week, their conversation grew, one day at a time:

_why are you trying so hard for me_

**_what do you mean_ **

_i’m nothing. no one. just neil. just nothing._

**_just abram_ **

_not anymore_

Andrew didn’t know what to say, so he folded the note and put it in his wallet and checked out the gnome book and left the library. He thought about burning the book, burning the note, burning all of his possessions until there was nothing left of himself, but instead he went home, and slipped the note in his nightstand, and dropped the book on the floor, and sat on his bed until his family came home. 

*

Andrew had been lounging on a couch in the art building because no one ever went to the art building when he suddenly found himself sharing the couch with someone who plopped on the cushion beside him.

“Sick digs,” the person said after looking around, and Andrew turned to find dark red hair and violent blue eyes and a face hacked and slashed and burned to bits. Andrew blinked, and Abram—Neil—offered a small smile. “You come here often?”

Andrew, heart heavy, said, “Yes.”

Neil nodded, leaning his head on the back of the couch and closing his eyes. He said, “You’ve gotten me into loads of trouble, you know.”

“With the FBI?” Andrew asked, staring at the freckles snaking up Neil’s exposed arms, also riddled with scar tissue and burns.

“With my friends, you asshole,” Neil said. “Matt has been frantically trying new dessert recipes to find one I’ll like. Kevin wants to go fishing all the fucking time. Allison won’t stop calling you a monster even though you didn’t actually touch her with the knife.”

“You didn’t tell me about this,” Andrew said, not acknowledging anything Neil said. He was staring at the thick scars pulling Neil’s skin taut on his cheek.

“About what?” Neil asked.

“Your face.”

“I thought I had told you I was apparently attractive?”

“You told me a lot of things.”

“To be fair,” Neil said, lifting his head and opening his eyes to grin at Andrew. “I thought I was going to die.”

“I’m never fair,” Andrew reminded him, and Neil laughed, his face crinkling in amusement, his body relaxing into the couch. Andrew hated everything suddenly: hated Neil, hated the earthquake, hated all he had done to get here, now, with Neil, on this couch, in this building, alone, together.

“I hate you,” Andrew said.

Neil, amused, said, “Oh? Were you trying to find me all this time just to tell me that?”

“Yes.”

“Ah,” Neil said, and Andrew, faced with the full weight and force of the boy not crushed by a wall and not about to die, asked, “Why are you doing this?”

Neil’s humor faded, but he still sounded a bit hopeful when he replied, “Maybe I want to know you, too.”

They stared at each other, nothing between them, for a long minute before Neil stood and offered a hand for Andrew to take. Andrew stared up at him, not moving an inch. 

“It’s you and me against the world, Andrew,” Neil said, his eyes sparkling in challenge.

 _Until one of us dies,_ Andrew thought, and then reached out to grab Neil’s hand and let himself be pulled up.

**Author's Note:**

> meanwhile, in the psu newspaper and radio departments: 
> 
> 💰🤑  
> 👀🍿  
> 😍🥳


End file.
